Suffolk

SITA UK has been selected by Suffolk County Council as its preferred bidder for a 25-year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) Residual Waste Treatment Contract to manage residual household waste in Suffolk. The award of the contract is subject to a Suffolk County Council cabinet decision which will be taken later this year.

Suffolk is one of the country’s top recycling councils, with a current recycling and composting rate of around 50 per cent. However, this still leaves over 200,000 tonnes of household waste - plus business waste - that currently goes to landfill.

In order to reduce the amount of Suffolk’s waste that goes to landfill and the associated cost to council taxpayers, SITA UK is seeking planning permission to develop an energy-from-waste facility at Suffolk County Council’s Highways Depot site on Lodge Lane, Great Blakenham.

The facility sits alongside the Suffolk Waste Partnership’s goal to recycle or compost 60 per cent of municipal waste by 2015. By diverting waste from landfill, recovering valuable energy from the waste left after recycling and reducing the county’s dependence on fossil fuels, SITA UK would help to support Suffolk’s aspiration to be the greenest county.  

The facility would use modern, proven energy-from-waste technology to produce enough electricity to power 30,000 homes (approximately the same number of homes as in Lowestoft) and would create around 43 new, long-term jobs for Suffolk.

A planning application for the facility will be submitted to Suffolk County Council’s Planning Committee in December 2010. The planning application will be accompanied by an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) which shows how the community and environment will be protected. It is expected that a decision will be made in Autumn 2011 with the facility being operational by December 2014.

Community engagement

To ensure that the local community and wider Suffolk residents are fully informed about the proposals, we are undertaking a comprehensive pre-application engagement programme, where we will be seeking feedback from local residents and interested parties.

This includes a series of public exhibitions, newsletters, information packs and a community liaison group. An initial public exhibition was held on 22 and 23 July in Great Blakenham, which will be followed by a series of exhibitions across Suffolk during September and October.

Download the newsletter which was sent to local residents and businesses around the site:

Suffolk energy-from-waste news

Download the exhibition boards, which were displayed at the exhibition in Great Blakenham Village Hall:

Suffolk energy-from-waste exhibition boards

Download the feedback form:

Suffolk energy-from-waste feedback form

We are reviewing the feedback we received from visitors to the exhibition and we will take this into account as we develop our planning application.

For further details, please contact our freephone community information line on 0800 072 1179.  Alternatively you can email us with questions or feedback at suffolkefw@sita.co.uk, or write to us at:

SITA Suffolk
Freepost reference RSHJ-LKUR-TALS
c/o PPS Group
Langham House
302-308 Regent Street
London  W1B 3AT